Today's consumer is inundated with advertising. In fact, advertising is so ubiquitous it is often times ignored. What is more, many people lack the belief that companies tell the truth in advertisements. As a result, word of mouth marketing and advertising has become increasingly important with respect to the sales of certain products. Word of mouth refers to the passing of information, especially ratings and reviews, but also general information. In the context of advertising and marketing, the use of word of mouth may mean passing information between consumers or other entities, including manufacturers, experts, retailers, etc. to convey aspects or merits of a product, or the experience one person has related to that product, or related products.
The emergence of the importance of word of mouth marketing and advertising has coincided with the use of the Internet for researching, shopping and purchasing of products. Thus, online marketing and advertising has also become increasingly important. The use of word of mouth marketing in an online setting may therefore be an effective method for such online advertising, as consumer recommendations allow word of mouth advertising to be disseminated either online or offline.
In fact, according to a 2007 global Nielsen survey, consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising, as cited by 78% of the study's respondents.
When businesses enable customers, or other types of users, to write reviews, ask or answer questions from the community, or share experiences, they create content that become powerful forms of marketing, and in particular, as discussed above, word of mouth marketing.
This view has been widely reinforced by many operators of web sites including, for example, retailers who report that products with relatively more reviews sell better and are returned less often.
Suppliers of products and services may monitor customer sentiment on a limited number of products on their own web sites. However, they are unable to scale to meet the needs of monitoring broad product catalogs, a problem which is compounded if the products are present in multiple and distributed e-commerce channels.
Further, the current model for user-generated content in the form of reviews and ratings on products and services is one-way. That is, a customer can post a review on an individual retailer or manufacturer web site and others may post subsequent reviews, comment on (or rate the helpfulness of) a previous review, but there is no mechanism for engagement or communication about the product directly from the service supplier, provider, or manufacturer.
Furthermore, while a manufacturer may wish to engage reviewers on a piecemeal basis by leaving follow-up comments, such comments are typically collapsed or otherwise ordered so that a user is required to click a link in order to read them. Moreover, review systems typically do not provide for user icons or avatars or other methods of attribution, i.e., a reader will not necessarily be able to identify the comment as coming from an “official” of the manufacturer.